Extra Books - February 21 to 27

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• Why I picked it up: Another book for school reading
• Rating: 3
• Challenges: 100+
• My Thoughts:
• Well, this isn't really a novel or nonfiction book that I can review properly. It really depends on what translation you have, but I didn't really pay attention to the translator's notes/interpretations. On the whole, a very handy little book. I love stuff like this that's still relevant and meaningful thousands of years later.
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Published: September 1961
• Genre: Historical fiction/satire
• Why I picked it up: On my TBR list
• Rating: 4.5 stars
• Challenges: 2011 TBR Pile | 100+
• My Thoughts: 
• I FINALLY FINISHED IT OMG. I buckled down on Tuesday and read 300 pages or so. 
• I really did enjoy this book, promise. I've never really read any war novels or books so satirical as this one, so this was a first for me. I can see why everyone makes such a big deal about it, though! I love the balance of humourous and serious moments. When you finally read about the event that transformed Yossarian, it's pretty heartbreaking. 
• Hrrm...it's too big for me to reflect upon -.- (yeah, I'm being lazy XP I have a lot on my mind right now, gah).
• I particularly liked Yossarian, Major Major and the chapters about Milo (although I didn't like Milo himself, of course).
• I particularly liked The Soldier Who Saw Everything Twice. There were lots of other parts I remember. But that one sticks in my mind :/ And the chapter Colonel Catchart. Silly Colonel.
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Published: September 2006
• Genre: Post-apocalyptic fiction
• Why I picked it up: Needed to read it for school
• Rating: 4 stars
• Challenges: 100+
• My Thoughts:
• I am in love with the writing style used in this book. There isn't much more to say there XD Everything about it, I love. This book will probably serve well as future inspiration.
• In class we discussed how it isn't really about two characters, it's about the relationship. I completely agree. The portrayal of the father/son relationship is part of what makes this book so strong.
• Sometimes with the pronouns it would get confusing. Because it's just 'the man' and 'the boy' so all pronouns are he and I got a little lost in some sentences. But that's an exceptionally minor complaint.
• I was highly disappointed in the last five pages or so, however. SPOILERS AHEAD.
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• I was quite prepared for the father to die of his illness, but I thought there would be more tragedy. I was sure the boy was going to die also and I thought it would be at the hands of the bad guys or the man being forced to shoot him. Alas, it was not so. The ending of the book was the least emotional part for me :/ Oh well, at least I was more invested in the style of the book than the story!

Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes

Author: Ray Bradbury

Title:  Something Wicked This Way Comes

Published: 1962

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Length: 289 pages

Genre: Light fantasy/horror

Target age: 12+
Why I picked it up: Inspired Neil Gaiman
Rating: 3.5 stars
Challenges: 100+

Buy: Chapters | Barnes and Noble | Check your local bookstore!

What a fun read! A bit scary, of course. But enjoyable. I rarely rarely read 'horror' (I can't even think of a solid example of something 'horrorish' that I have read), but this is probably the closest I've come to horror in a fictional novel format. I honestly didn't find it very frightening or terrifying or anything. My favourite aspects of the book were the characterization of the boys and Bradbury's writing style.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started this book. I think I was anticipating more story/plot than character, but I ended up really liking Jim and Will more than I liked the plot. An excerpt of how Bradbury describes the boys:

The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had only saved up six years of staring.

Will and Jim may be well-established archetypes of young boys(Jim, the darker, mysterious, more mature; Will, the more innocent, cautious, tag along) but placed in Bradbury's hands and executed with his style they come alive in a refreshing way. I also liked how the relationship between Will and his older-than-average Dad played out; I liked how the Dad was eventually a major character.

Bradbury is also evidently a master of the short sentence, long sentence style. I hope this isn't just something I'm making up; hopefully you understand what I mean. He's very very good at the short sentences and he's also very very good at the rambling ones. He knows how to place every word he chooses to use. A rambling sentence:

A carnival should be all growls, roars like timberlands stacked, bundled, rolled and crashed, great explosions of lion dust, men ablaze with working anger, pop bottles jangling, horse buckles shivering, engines and elephants in full stampeded through rains of sweat while zebras neighed and trembled like cage trapped in cage.

And some of the shorter ones:

The sun rose yellow as a lemon.
The sky was round and blue.
The birds looped clear water songs in the air.
Will and Jim leaned from their windows.
Nothing had changed. Except the look in Jim's eyes.

These examples also shows you what I like about his descriptive prose. I find passages like the one above, combined with shorter, handful of word paragraphs, are a pleasure to read. I get this feeling of very clean, sharp, vibrant prose from Bradbury. Everything he writes is used just right. I think I could learn a lot from this book. Bradbury's style is very good. I am not very eloquent, forgive me, all I can think of is 'very good'. But I think he writes with a good style, one that holds up against the test of time. If I could write half as good as Bradbury does, that would be a nice start. I look forward to exploring his other works.

The merry go round was running, yes, but...
It was running backwards!
The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattled-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanents, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.
The music, Will thought, it's backwards, too!

 Afterthought: Yes, I did immediately notice some parallels between this and Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord. I liked Cornelia's story a lot more, but it does make me wonder if she was inspired by this one. Which wouldn't at all be a bad thing! I'm just curious about things like that. 

 

Hugo - '99 Problems' and 'Bread and Butter'

I wish I had more to review by this guy! You can find a few more to listen to on his website and some of his Thai-language songs on YouTube, but since only two of his songs are easily available (i.e. on iTunes....) I'm just going to stick with those.

I heard 99 Problems on the XM a couple of months ago and thought it was brilliant. I then promptly forgot about it until I heard it again last week and made sure to run straight to Google to look it up. The original version is one of one rap songs I actually like. This is a great cover, though. Hugo has done a fantastic job reworking the song to give it that great blues (? I don't know when that word should be used but this song makes me think of it) sound and creating his own lyrics. (Is it really a cover, then, given how much he's changed? Well, I'm just going to keep calling it that anyhow). Also, it has a very good bass line. I could listen to this song for hours on end, which I have practically already done. Bread and Butter is also a great catchy tune. Both of the songs sound like nothing I've listened to before (there's a lot of music out there, okay? I can't get around to everything). I looked forward to when more of his music is readily available!

Extra Books - February 14 to 20

•  The Liar's Club by Mary Karr
• Published: 1995
• Genre: Memoir
• Why I picked it up: Had to read it for school, didn't, am now
• Rating: 2.5 stars
• Challenges: Memorable Memoirs | 100+
• My Thoughts: 
• Meh. This book was unsatisfying for me, somehow. I didn't feel like a lot happened and the ending especially was dull. That being said, it is a memoir and therefore based on a person' life. But still. The story being told wasn't one I was really interesting.
• I did like bits and pieces of the prose. Karr can write, that's for certain. I liked how she would make note of where her memories turned fuzzy and of things that just completely blacked out of her mind.
• I feel like too much was left out about the mother. It seemed to me that the reader wasn't being given chunks of information and I felt confused about all that. If you know what I mean. ^^;
• My favourite part was when they crossed the Orange Bridge during a hurricane. I think it was really well-written and it reminded me of the nightmares I used to have about crossing exceptionally high and long narrow bridges that twisted back and forth like they were trying to throw you off.
• Maybe it's just that I wasn't in the mood to read this type of story and was forcing myself through it, but I definitely enjoyed The Glass Castle a lot more than this book. I guess it just wasn't for me :/

Sleepless - Updated

Story I posted last week with edits (I've finished it, but the part I finished hasn't been properly edited and it's very noticeable so I'm not posting the complete version yet XD). I noticed in a few spots I have jolting (lack of) transitions and I'm working on incorporating that into my style for this story because it feels appropriate. This story will probably need one more good, tough rewrite before I'm satisfied with how it feels (needs to be more surreal, mysterious).
____

My eyes are watering again. I crush them with the heel of my hand, trying to press back the tears but they keep coming. Ignoring my burning eyes, I brush strands of hair from my forehead. Too hot, too hot. There is a glass of water on my bedside table. If I want to reach it I will have to roll over. I do not want to turn around. But it's too hot. I close my eyes, even though darkness already blinds me. I roll over slowly, trying not to shift the blankets. The silence, the stillness, makes me nervous. I reach my hand out, guiding it towards where I believe the glass is but I am shaking and my hand jerks and I hit the glass, the crystal glass, and it falls to the floor, smashing into a hundred pieces. The water that touches the floor vanishes with a sizzle. Shards of glass fly up towards me and bury themselves in my ears. I clutch at my ears but I am too slow, they are bleeding already. Blood trickles down the side of my face, drips onto my lips and into my mouth. Even now I can still hear the ringing echoes of the crystal shattering. It’s so warm. I can’t resist now, it's too damn hot and besides, the glass already made more of a disturbance than I ever will. I pull off my blankets and toss them to the ground. Stagnant air reaches my skin. It does not provide the cool relief I had hoped for. What’s that sound? Hissing. I can hear them moving. [The sound, the rhythm of movement is hypnotic.] I look over the edge of the bed. Snakes, masses of snakes, cover the floor, some twisted together in knots but most writhing over the others. The broken glass must have woken them. I am still and silent but then I blink and every creature stops moving and stares at me. Their heads are disproportionately large for their slender bodies, those heads that are oddly shaped like that of a human newborn. My stomach churns as the tiny mouths on these human-snakes open simultaneously and begin to wail. I clutch at my blankets and tug them over my head and bury my face in the pillow. The snakes leap up, launching themselves towards me just as the glass did. They scream and cry and howl as they land on the bed. I can feel them ripping the blankets. I push my face deeper into the pillow. Go away, go away, go away. My body is [heating] up and I do not want to hide under these blankets for long. The weight lifts from my bed. The screams fade. Thank God. I peel back the covers and try to give myself to Sleep, but now I hear music. A deep, booming sound that shakes the bed with every not. A song I know all too well: [Bach’s Toccata & Fugue], coming from an organ. The sound is octaves lower than any I have ever heard before, beyond any frequency human ears can detect, but I hear the song. I sit up. The sound resonates within me, rattling my bones and heart and soul. I reach my hand to the top of my head. The music drives me to this. I hold a strand of hair between two fingers and tug. My scalp stings for a moment where the hair comes out. I grab another strand and I [yank] again. As the song swells and fades and pounds on, I clutch more strands of hair, bigger clumps, and continue to pull. The music stops. My hair lies on the blankets around me. I feel a touch cooler now that I do not have [insulation] on my head. But still. My skin burns.

Driftless Pony Club - Buckminster

Artist: Driftless Pony Club
Album: BuckminsterYear: 2011
Length: 30 minutes, 8 seconds
Genre: Indie Rock
Why I picked it up: Originally fan of wheezywaiter, now also fan of the DPC
Favourite tracks: House of 1982 Built Like a Ship, El Cid III
Random lyric: I don't know what I am/But I'm not a category
Purchase: Preorder physical copy, get instant digital download

 

I have just discovered this is the first thing that pops up when you google 'driftless pony club review buckminster'...I was looking for other early reviews, okay? Tom Milsom's comes up after this and my opinion isn't going to be nearly as well thought out at his 'cause that's not what I do. (If you're new here, please click the 'about' tab up there. Also, click here to read Tom's review.)  It makes me nervous to write anything. Perhaps I could tell you just to go buy it and support a very good indie rock band? No, I suppose that won't cut it. Here goes.

Actually, the problem is, before I even started to feel nervous about writing this, that I just don't know what to say. I can't put my finger on DPC, I can never figure out how to describe how or why I like the band. I know I like the music. I know this is a very good album. Some of the songs are very very good and I listen to them on repeat lots. I like Craig's voice and I like the use of guitar and I like all the fiddly bits. I don't love this album. I do, however, like it very much and it is a very enjoyable listen and definitely worth your money.

But really, I still haven't said anything. Perhaps I'll pick apart Tom's review and tell you what I agree and disagree with. (Blockquotes from Tom's review).

In 2009 Driftless Pony Club released Expert, a collection of six songs that did nothing but highlight the strongest traits of this band. Adolescent guitars swarmed under lyrics exquisitely close to making sense, often building to windswept climaxes that left anyone paying attention tantalisingly close to understanding what they’d been shouted at about. The words and sentences made sense on their own, but were tightly knitted together into something hazy and dreamlike. It was an EP that captured fragments of moods and moments and, regardless of context, managed to portray them with a glorious clarity and emotion.

Tom goes on to say Buckminster 'wisely builds on a lot of [these] things' and I whole-heartedly agree. Well said. It's good there are people far more eloquent than I am in this world. Tom then goes on to discuss that the lyrical details of the album are its downfall (too strong a word!! but I can't think of a different one...). The album is about Buckminster Fuller and that probably says it all there. Not a lot of people know a lot of things about the man who invented the geodeisic dome (that's about all I knew of him before this album and now that I've checked out his Wiki page, he didn't actually invent it but popularised and patented the design). Tom summarizes his review with this:

Perhaps I’m overthinking it. Perhaps it works far better as an album for those who have no idea this guy is a real person, and just think that Dymaxion Chronofile is a funny bunch of syllables that don’t bear much thinking about. I just feel like there’s a whole other side to this incredibly rich and well-realised album that can only be unlocked by having a good read of Buckminster Fuller’s wikipedia page, and doing that has the unfortunate side-effect of rendering sections of it disappointing. It’s a quantum album; there are two sides to it that are impossible to see at the same time, one hazily surrealistic to Expert levels and beyond, the other a detailed and well-assembled document of a fascinating man’s life. It’s just a shame that they never quite mesh to become the phenomenal album Buckminster occasionally hints at having the potential to be.

I sort of kind of not really somewhat agree with Tom on this. (That's helpful, isn't it?). I agree that there are two sides to this album, the two he describes. I disagree mostly that those two sides can't mesh. I have now looked over Buckminster's Wikipedia page and I still enjoy the album and still like listening to it. I do have the feeling that I had to have an inside joke or some intelligent comment explained to me. But that doesn't make the album sound any worse.

I also agree that maybe he (and now I) was overthinking it. This is musically a very good album and since it is music, I think in the end that's all that matters (in this case, under these circumstances, etc. etc.). We, the listeners, shouldn't have to become overly concerned with the reality of the lyric subject matter.

...

 

Well, what an useless post. The worst 'review' I've ever written (I'm so bad at expressing myself -.-) and it'll probably get the mosts views...Oh well :/ I hope some of what I tried to say make sense, I've never written something like this before! And, quite honestly, now I'm starting to understand just a tiny bit how Tom must have felt when he tweeted 'I've just realised that writing and putting up an even slightly negative review of a friend's album is a massive dick move.' I don't agree that it was a dick move, but I feel kind of bad saying anything negative. It's a good album! Really! Go buy it and enjoy :)

 

Sleepless

I've started a wiki for my writing (hooray for friends who have web servers in their basements and like coding things, etc). I love using it to keep track of versions of stories. This is the third version of a short story I started one night when I couldn't sleep. Right now this story is in a kind of sad state, but I have lots of commentary on this story on my personal blog and my wiki, so I'll just shut up and post what I have so far. I'm planning on doing a rewrite and finishing it off in time for next Sunday.
____

My eyes are watering again. I crush them with the heel of my hand, trying to press back the tears but they keep coming. Ignoring my burning eyes, I pluck strands of hair from my forehead. Too hot, too hot. There is a glass of water on my bedside table. If I want to reach it I will have to roll over. I don't want to turn around. But it's too hot. I close my eyes, even though it's too dark to see a thing. I roll over slowly, trying not to shift the blankets. It's so quiet. The silence, the stillness, makes me nervous. I reach my hand out, guiding it blindly towards where I think the glass is but I'm shaking and my hand jerks and I hit the glass, the crystal glass, and it falls to the floor, crashing into a hundred pieces. The water on the floor evaporates with a sizzle. Shards of glass fly up towards my face and bury themselves in my ears. I clutch at my ears but I’m too slow, they’re bleeding already. Blood trickles down my side of my face and into my mouth. It’s so warm. I can't stop myself now, it's too damn hot and besides, the glass already made that [infernal racket] [(I can still hear the ringing echoes)]. I rip off my blankets and toss them to the ground. Stagnant/stale air touches my skin [but the cool relief it provides last only a moment]. What’s that sound? Hissing. I can hear them wriggling on the floor. I look over the edge of the bed. (To hell with caution.) Snakes, masses of snakes, cover the floor, some twisted together in knots but most slithering all over the others. The broken glass must have woken them. I’m silent, but then I blink and they all stop moving and stare at me. [Their heads are disproportionately large for their scrawny bodies. It’s because the heads on the snakes are oddly similar to that of a human child. A newborn baby, to be precise.] My stomach churns as the tiny mouths on these human-snakes open simultaneously and begin to wail. I clutch at my blankets and tug them over my head. The snakes leap up, attacking me just as the glass did. They scream and cry and howl as they land on my bed. I can feel them ripping the blankets. I bury my face deeper into my pillow. Go away, go away, go away. I feel so warm and I don’t want to hide under these blankets anymore. The weight lifts from my bed and the screams fade. Thank God. I peel back the covers and try to sleep, but now I hear music. A deep, booming sound that shakes my bed with every note played. A song even I know: [Bach’s Toccata & Fugue], coming from an organ. The sound is octaves lower than any I have ever heard before. Human ears should not be able to hear a frequency this low but I can. I sit up. The sound resonates within me, rattling my bones and heart and soul. I reach my hand to the top of my head. The music drives me to this. I grab a strand of hair between two fingers and pull. My head stings for a moment where the hair comes out. I grab another strand and I pull again. As the song swells and fades back and continues to pound on, I grab more strands of hair, bigger clumps, and continue to pull. The music stops. My hair covers the bed. I feel slightly cooler now that I don’t have hair covering my head. But still, my body is so warm.

Barbara Kingsolver - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Author: Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

Title: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Published: April 2007

Publisher: HarperCollins

Length: 352 pages

Genre: Food memoir

Why I picked it up: Browsing Amazon for 'food' books, this one looked good
Rating: 3.5 stars
Challenges: 100+ | Foodie's 

Buy: Barnes and Noble | Chapters | Check your local bookstore!

This is the first book I've read this year that I picked out specifically for a challenge and wasn't planning on reading before I discovered said challenge. I suppose the whole point of a challenge is to discover new books you wouldn't have otherwise and I'm glad that I came across this book.  Sidenote: I'm a tad exhausted right now and feeling a little scatterbrained, so this review might show that ^^;

Animal, Miracle, Vegetable is the story of one family's year-long foray into eating locally, mainly off of food grown by themselves on their Appalachian farm. Barbara, the mother of the family, writes most of the book. Her husband and eldest daughter provide sidebars, with Steven writing about ways the 'average person' can become more involved, including with links to learn more, and Camille writing short essays about a teenager's perspective (the next generation, that's going to have deal with the brunt on the mess of climate change [my generation, eep!]) and recipes to conclude each chapter. I enjoyed this set up, it was heartwarming in a way to see a whole family work together on a book like this and Steven and Camille's pieces really filled out the knowledge contained in this book. The younger daughter, Lily, was too young to write anything for the book but she was an important character in this story. The acknowledgements at the end conclude with 'And we thank Lily for absolutely everything - plus eggs. If you think she's a charming character in this book, you should see her walk out the front door.' I enjoyed the balance of the saga of living on the farm and the snapshots into different areas of the food industry (such as GMOs, meat production, education, etc.). There's something for everyone in this book.

My favourite aspect of this book is probably the tone that Barbara told her story in. Read: I liked how she didn't come off preachy. It is so easy for someone in her situation, who has the vantage point to preach to the masses that how she does things (i.e., buy local, organic, etc.) is the right and best and only way. I didn't get that at all from this book. The author(s) explained their decisions and backed up those decisions, but there wasn't any 'If everyone does not starting living like we do, the world will end.' I felt more like she and her family wanted to tell their story so that other people, people like me who are stuck in the city and not really paying attention to how they eat, could see that there are other options.


For me, this book is the straw that broke the camel's back. For the past year or two, I've been making little lists, notes to self, etc. about how I want to live my life when I'm out and on my own, however many years off that time may be (I'm one of those people who yearn for and thrive on independence XP). In a few weeks, I'll be turning 19. Year one of being an official adult complete. When I put it that way, I got kind of fed up with myself. I shouldn't have to wait until I move out to change my lifestyle. I can start now and it's really more important than ever on a global scale that I do start now. I'm starting by trying to replace store-bought foods with homemade ones (ex. this week I made granola bars and chocolate pudding. When my sister approves these recipes, there'll be no reason to by individual packaged puddings and granola bars for school lunches. I can make them, they'll be cheaper, cut down on waste and tastier.). Then when summer comes around, I'm going to start looking for more environmentally or people friendly (ie. fair trade) ingredients to make these foods with. Anyhow. Enough about that. That's a post for my other blog :P The point is, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle inspired me to make these changes and I think that's a very good thing.

Extra Books - January 30 to February 6

•  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
• Published: July 1998
• Genre: Magical fantasy
• Why I picked it up: Rereading the series
• Rating: 3.5 stars
• Challenges: Harry Potter 2011 | 100+
• My Thoughts: 
• What I find most interesting about the first couple of Harry Potter books (and I suspect this will continue until the fourth or fifth book) is how little happens in them! Haha. I know there's a mammoth plot and back story galore to come, but there's very little of that in the first two books at least. I liked how this one gave you a few more tidbits about Voldemort and how powerful he used to be (through giving more information about Lucius Malfoy, who I am discovering this time around is kind of deliciously malevolent). But still. Whatever happened in this book won't be recognized as important til later on. This one had a little more substance than the introductory book, but it still felt mostly like a fun kids series. Oh, how I look forward to what lies ahead...

I've fallen behind quite a bit on my reading schedule. I've signed out of the library a lot of books I thought I should read but end up having not interest in (Faulkner = definitely not for me) so I end up dropping them, at a loss with what to read next. but, I've been reading at least two books a week which is where my reading habits of a few years used to be (well, a few years ago I would read three or four books a week but the books I would read then were much easier reads and a lot shorter). An improvement over last year, at least, which is satisfying in its own way.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

*The following information applies to the English hardcover edition. (the novel was originally published in Japanese in 2002).*

Author: Haruki Murakami

Translator: Philip Gabriel

Title: Kafka on the Shore

Published: 2005

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Length: 436 pages

Genre: Post-modern surrealism

Target age: Adult (I'd also recommend it for mature 16+)
Why I picked it up: Can't remember
Rating: 5 stars
Challenges: 100+ | 2011 TBR Pile | Global

Buy: Chapters | Barnes and Noble | Check your local bookstore!

Now here is a book you don't come across everyday. This is a story that has all the elements of a perfect story and Murakami executes those elements well, balancing them all in a way that I can't recall experiencing before. Those four elements are (in my opinion, for me as a reader looking for a good book to enjoy) characters, story/plot, emotional value and prose.

Let's start with the characters, since the three other elements pretty much evolve from there in this book, I think.There are five characters central to the story. Each is unique and well-developed and while those are just two general words to describe the characters, those are the only two words that I love to be able to apply to a whole cast of characters. The characters were believable. Leading straight into the emotional value of the piece, I actually felt hollow and sad when a character died and I felt proud and happy when a character realized how they were changing for the better (trying to avoid spoilers here, my apologies for the generalities).

Kafka on the Shore is a novel that was written to make you think. It deals very much with life and death, love both physical and emotional, the meaning of life and finding your place. Murakami provides the readers with some answers but never anything flat out and only enough that you, the reader, has something to further reflect upon. It's an epic tale, really, and part of the reason I love it so much is that the answers are never spelt out but there's enough to go on that you can read between the lines and figure things out yourself, it's not so open ended. A quote from the author's website has him explaining the reader would benefit from multiple reads of the story:

Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write.

That definitely comes across in this book. Obviously, I've only read it once but I feel like I've just scrapped the surface of what this book has opened up to me (does that make sense?) and I look forward to rereading it and gaining even more out of the experience.

You're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, an dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.

The prose is what blends all these elements together. Murakami's style is flowing and engaging, never dull. The contrast between the first person POV of a 15 year old boy and the third person POV from Nakata and Hoshino works very well in telling the story and allows for the prose to be changed up. Ugh, I'm having a terrible time trying to get across how/why I loved this story so much. It's beautifully crafted, the characters are stirring and believable, the prose is vivid and delicate and the story is dynamic and thoughtful and different and even if you don't have all the answers you thought you would like to have when you were reading the book, that's okay. The story can be gruesome and strange and twisted but it all fits and seems so natural. I love the role that the library, books, music and nature play. I felt like this story was written for me. I am sure I will reread this one many times in the future.

As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart's pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than passing thought before. Not just stars - how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I'll never outrun that awful feeling.

EDIT: Extra stuff I forgot to say when I wrote this post: Hoshino is my favourite character. The violent bits freaked me out but that was great, they did what they should have done. The description of the novel talks about a murder where the perpetrator and victim are pretty much unknown and I thought 'What the heck, how does that work?' but when you read the book it makes perfect sense and is fantastically executed.
 

Sigur Ros - Takk...

Artist: Sigur Ros

Album: Takk...

Year: 2005

Length: 65 minutes, 29 seconds

Genre: Post/minimalist rock, ambient
Why I picked it up: Aware of the band for awhile, finally got around to buying an album (I'm in that kind of mood lately...)

Favourite tracks: Gong, Mea Bloanasir
Random lyric: A lost seafarer, alive/has returned home/a diver comes/has returned home [English translation, very few lyrics, most in Icelandic or made-up language Hopelandic]

Purchase: Amazon | iTunes | Check your local music store!

School has finally begun to eat my life D: I've got projects and interviews and readings  heavy through the end of the month -.- Will finish this when I have the time, gahhhhg
EDIT: I decided just to bump this post up to this week, since it wasn't until today that I got around to editing it and I haven't listened to any new music since then XP

Sigur Ros is one of those bands who's sound is hard to capture in words. I resort to Amazon reviews to find the right ones. 'Sonic landscapes' seems to be a very appropriate phrase. Their music finds that quite little place in your mind that imagines all these big wondrous places and ideas and just blows them right open. The music is so soft and delicate but also has a raw and powerful quality to it. Do you understand what I'm trying to explain here? Well, give them a listen. Maybe then it'll make more sense.

I don't have too much more to say because I was really just looking for some nice peaceful music to sort of meditate on. This was a band I had been interested in for a few years; I had just been waiting for the moment when I felt I needed them most. I got what I was looking for.